SOURCE: Introduction to Early Irish Myths and Sagas, translated by Jeffrey Gantz, Penguin Books, 1981, pp. 1-27.

In the following excerpt, Gantz offers an overview of Celtic culture, history, society, religion, and literature.

One day, in winter, Derdriu's foster-father was outside, in the snow, flaying a weaned calf for her. Derdriu saw a raven drinking the blood on the snow, and she said to Lebarcham 'I could love a man with those three colours: hair like a raven, cheeks like blood and body like snow.'

'The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu' (p. 260)

This passage, from one of the finest stories ever written in Ireland, evinces much of what Irish literature is: romantic, idealistic, stylized and yet vividly, even appallingly, concrete. Most of all, it exemplifies the tension between reality and fantasy that characterizes all Celtic art. In Ireland, this art has taken many forms: illumination (the books...